Journalist: Dems trying to maintain a stranglehold on the flow of information

US Democratic Party leaders and their liberal followers are attempting to gain and maintain a stranglehold on the flow of information by censoring content on social media and alternative media, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, who maintains that their effort is being accelerated because it is building a large audience that they are afraid they cannot control.

Greenwald made the remarks in a recent article after a former Facebook-employee- turned-“whistleblower” testified before a Senate Commerce subcommittee on Tuesday where she alleged that the social media giant is having harmful effects on American democracy and the mental health of children.

"Facebook has not earned our blind faith," said former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen in her opening statement before lawmakers. "There is a pattern of behavior that I saw [at] Facebook: Facebook choosing to prioritize its profits over people."

"You can declare moral bankruptcy, and we can figure out a fix [to] these things together because we solve problems together," Haugen said.

Haugen detailed numerous incidents in which she said top executives at Facebook, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were made directly aware of their platforms' potentially negative influence on democracy and the mental health of children. But, she alleged, they showed blatant disregard to these issues.

'Facebook needs real oversight,' whistleblower tells US Congress

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies against Facebook, pleading to lawmakers to force the social media giant to place safety before profits.

Greenwald wrote that "(t)here is no doubt, at least to me, that Facebook and Google are both grave menaces. Through consolidation, mergers and purchases of any potential competitors, their power far exceeds what is compatible with a healthy democracy.”

“But none of the swooning over this new Facebook heroine nor any of the other media assaults on Facebook have anything remotely to do with a concern over those genuine dangers,” he added.

“Congress has taken no steps to curb the influence of these Silicon Valley giants because Facebook and Google drown the establishment wings of both parties with enormous amounts of cash and pay well-connected lobbyists who are friends and former colleagues of key lawmakers to use their D.C. influence to block reform. With the exception of a few stalwarts, neither party's ruling wing really has any objection to this monopolistic power as long as it is exercised to advance their own interests,” he continued.

“And that is Facebook's only real political problem: not that they are too powerful but that they are not using that power to censor enough content from the internet that offends the sensibilities and beliefs of Democratic Party leaders and their liberal followers, who now control the White House, the entire executive branch and both houses of Congress. Haugen herself, now guided by long-time Obama operative Bill Burton, has made explicitly clear that her grievance with her former employer is its refusal to censor more of what she regards as ‘hate, violence and misinformation,’” he explained.

“Agitating for more online censorship has been a leading priority for the Democratic Party ever since they blamed social media platforms (along with WikiLeaks, Russia, Jill Stein, James Comey, The New York Times, and Bernie Bros) for the 2016 defeat of the rightful heir to the White House throne, Hillary Clinton. And this craving for censorship has been elevated into an even more urgent priority for their corporate media allies, due to the same belief that Facebook helped elect Trump but also because free speech on social media prevents them from maintaining a stranglehold on the flow of information by allowing ordinary, uncredentialed serfs to challenge, question and dispute their decrees or build a large audience that they cannot control. Destroying alternatives to their failing platforms is thus a means of self-preservation: realizing that they cannot convince audiences to trust their work or pay attention to it, they seek instead to create captive audiences by destroying or at least controlling any competitors to their pieties,” the journalist noted.

He stated that “Democrats do not make any secret of their intent to co-opt Silicon Valley power to police political discourse and silence their enemies.”

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